How BJP’s Maharashtra gamble can come back to bite it

Less than two weeks after Ajit Pawar broke up the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), the Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena has been left with much egg on its face and little leg to stand on.For, for all that the rebel Shiv Sainiks had ‘pretended’ that Uddhav Thackeray had betrayed Hindutva by allying with the secular Congress and the NCP, their primary grouse had been against Uddhav’s failure to overcome Ajit Pawar.As finance minister in the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government, Ajit Pawar was allegedly diddling Shiv Sainiks out of precious development funds for their constituencies and favouring NCP members.Ajit Pawar is now back as finance minister and deputy chief minister, this time chipping away at the powers of even deputy chief minister Devendra Fadnavis, who had to be divested of the finance portfolio. medium102018981It is clear that the fears of both the Shiv Sena (Shinde) and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) members of legislative assembly (MLAs), that they would be deprived of their dues, whether in terms of funds or cabinet berths, have come true. All the plum departments have been taken by the NCP. It raises questions about what the BJP has really achieved by breaking up the NCP.If it was meant to destroy Opposition unity, that clearly has not happened. The Shiv Sena (Uddhav) and the Congress are standing by Sharad Pawar’s faction. A weakened Sharad Pawar is clearly good news to both the allies as it ensures he will close ranks with them and focus on winning the next elections.A survey early this week revealed that 66% of NCP supporters are still with Sharad Pawar, and Ajit Pawar seems to have only 25% on his side.But while the motive of Ajit Pawar and his men is clear — they wish to keep themselves out of the net of the Enforcement Directorate — both the Shiv Sena (Shinde) and the BJP seem to have lost their unique talking points against the Congress-NCP-Sena alliance they dislodged from power in June last year.Hollow rhetoricThe Shinde faction’s allegation against Uddhav that he forgot Hindutva for an alliance with the NCP does not hold water anymore. The BJP went to town painting the NCP as “the most corrupt party” in the country, but all those it named as corrupt are now a part of its government.It was also not necessary to break up the NCP as the Shinde-Fadnavis government had the requisite numbers, even after taking into account the possibility of disqualification of Shinde Sena MLAs.The breakup seems to have been engineered more by central leaders of the BJP than by Fadnavis and the state BJP. Sources reveal that several internal surveys of the BJP show its numbers in the Lok Sabha drastically dropping in several states, including the Hindi heartland, bar Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand. medium102019036There are four key states — Bengal, Bihar, Karnataka and Maharashtra — where the party must retain its numbers. These states account for 158 Lok Sabha seats and the situation since 2019 has changed in all four.While they may not be able to retrieve Karnataka, the Opposition’s fortunes and alliances have undergone a tectonic shift in the other three.The Shiv Sena formed an alliance with the Congress and NCP in Maharashtra and the results to the Agricultural Produce Market Committee elections held earlier this year — considered a fair judge of the rural mood in the state — showed that despite differing ideologies, the three parties seem to have wide acceptance among the voters.The coming together of the Rashtriya Janata Dal and the Congress with Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal (United) in Bihar has already proven a formidable combination at the 2015 assembly election and the BJP has done awfully badly at the recent panchayat elections in Bengal.In addition, the impossible, not unlike the MVA alliance, seems to be happening in that state — not only did the Left parties and the Trinamool Congress come together on the same platform at the two Opposition meets in Patna and Bangalore, but Mamata Banerjee has now also indicated that she could share half-a-dozen seats with the Congress for the 2024 general election.A big liability?No wonder the BJP was in a hurry to break up Opposition unity in Maharashtra — as Fadnavis told his unhappy MLAs last week — but it also gives credence to Aaditya Thackeray’s statements that the Shinde Sena is incapable of taking the BJP over the 145 mark in the 288-member assembly.In the Lok Sabha, the BJP surveys have suggested that Shinde may not win more than five seats out of 48, while the BJP tally might come down from the current 24 (42 along with the Shiv Sena’s 18) to eight or 10. The party leadership had to save the state, the second largest in terms of Lok Sabha seats, at any cost. medium102019020The BJP, of course, is aware of the kind of damage the NCP might do to it from inside the government. The party is not certain that Ajit Pawar will stick by it after the Lok Sabha polls. It is not even sure that the entire drama has not been engineered by Sharad Pawar himself to get the best of both worlds — protection for his corrupt men against government action and the retention of the secular vote. NCP supporters, including farmers, usually vote against the BJP.The BJP must have also noted that there is less nastiness between the two factions of the NCP than there was between Uddhav and Shinde at their breakup last year. All that Ajit Pawar has said about his uncle is that he would not step aside and make way for the younger lot, and Sharad Pawar has retorted that he is neither tired nor retired. Nothing that will preclude the fences from being mended if and when Ajit Pawar seeks a homecoming depending on the way the wind blows a year from now.For Sharad Pawar, blood has always been thicker than water, considering how he ‘forgave’ Ajit Pawar the last time he rebelled and returned to his uncle’s side within 80 hours of being sworn in as deputy to Fadnavis. In fact, the BJP is convinced that even that drama was stage-managed by the duo.The BJP may have bitten off more than it can chew.The writer is Consulting Editor, National Herald, Mumbai.Lead illustration: Sandeep Adhwaryu